Townsend is using the magic of Kennedy

By Roger Simon

BALTIMORE - Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is the current lieutenant governor of Maryland, but that is not what people know about her.

What they know about her is that she is a Kennedy - a real Kennedy, not one of those "by-marriage" Kennedys - the eldest child of Robert and Ethel Kennedy.

And Townsend is not exactly shy about mentioning her roots, not any more.

The first time she ran for office in 1986, she was running for a seat in Congress and decided not to use the Kennedy name. All her campaign literature simply said: Kathleen Townsend.

And she lost, becoming the only Kennedy to lose a general election. (That record is so good, by the way, because most Kennedys run in Massachusetts, a state where they have deep roots, to put it mildly. Those Kennedys who run outside Massachusetts accurately point out they have a much tougher time.)

This time, however, Townsend is running for governor, and there is no question of her not using whatever magic the Kennedy name still has.

I followed her around for a day recently, a day that began with a speech to an alumni meeting of Alpha Phi Alpha, a black fraternity, where Townsend received a standing ovation.

"I'm up! I'm in the groove!" she told me afterward.

Outside, a TV reporter asked Townsend a litany of "Kennedy" questions, which by now Townsend can answer in her sleep.

"The Kennedy mystique? Does it help or hurt?" the reporter asks as the videotape rolls.

"I am very, very proud of what my father and uncle did for this country. But, frankly, people will judge me on what I have done," Townsend says, maintaining a thousand-watt smile.

"There is a new TV movie on Robert Kennedy. How do we get away from all that?"

"A lot of Americans don't want to get away from that," Townsend says. "But in Maryland, people want to know what Kathleen is going to do."

"People thought you would win in a cakewalk because of the Kennedy name, but now you are struggling," the reporter says.

Smile still in place, Townsend replies, "I am laying out clear differences between my opponent and myself."

"You have the Kennedy hair!" the reporter continues doggedly. "You have the Kennedy gestures!"

Townsend begins to laugh. "What about the teeth!" she shouts. "The teeth!"

A few stops later, however, in the Park Heights Barber Shop, on a hardscrabble stretch near Pimlico racetrack, a street on which the snack shops dispense their goods through bulletproof rotating cylinders, the smile begins to fade.

The shop is owned by Johnny Clinton, and Townsend glad-hands the customers as I ask Clinton how Townsend is doing.

"Well, it will be a tight race because of the race track issue," he says. "My customers want slot machines." Clinton and his customers are black. "So it's a hell of a thing, you know what I'm saying? It's going to be tight, tight. So she has to switch over and say she's for slot machines."

But Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is not for slot machines at racetracks. She is against them. And says if she is elected, she will veto them, even though the black community says they will provide many jobs.

Townsend now begins to take questions from the crowd inside the shop and directly gets hit with her opposition to slot machines.

"Slot machines are not the right answer," she says, and then she starts talking about "working hard and having a future."

The questioner talks about the jobs slots could bring.

"They will bring in some dollars," Townsend says, "but the state will lose dollars on crime and the loss to small businesses, when people spend their money on slot machines instead of buying things."

"But we have a lottery!" the questioner says.

"Slot machines are more addictive," Townsend says. "That's what studies show."

To some in the black community, Townsend's attitude toward slots is not only overly moralistic, but also condescending.

"It is such hypocrisy," one black leader tells me. "The stock market is gambling for the rich, and nobody says they have to stop that."

Townsend's Republican opponent, U.S. Rep. Bob Ehrlich, is in favor of slot machines and says the revenue from them will go a long way to-

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ward wiping out the state's deficit.

But Townsend is unmoved, and she is unmoved in part because of her upbringing.

"Religion was a very big part of our life," Townsend says. "Like a lot of families, we said prayers before and after every meal. We went to Mass every Sunday, and when my mother had her way, we went to Mass every day. Every night we prayed the Rosary and read a chapter of the Bible."

But the essential point was that there was a "profound link" between her father's religious principles and his political principles, which were based, she says, on hard work and sacrifice.

One of Townsend's brothers once remembered how, as a kid, he was lounging on a sofa one day at home reading a comic book, when his father came into the room and said, "Put that junk down right now, and get outside and do something!"

And you can bet that Bobby Kennedy did not mean play the slots. Which is why his daughter will oppose them, whether it costs her the election or not.

Roger Simon is a syndicated columnist for the Baltimore Sun.